Addressing health inequalities lies at the core of NHS goals. The National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme is dedicated to fostering equal access, enhancing patient experiences, and achieving optimal outcomes across all demographics.
NHS England has introduced the Core20PLUS5 framework, which defines specific target populations and clinical domains, such as mental health, to concentrate efforts on reducing health inequalities. Healthcare providers are being tasked with recognising, reporting on and addressing variations in access to services, patient experiences, and health outcomes within their respective communities.
How is Mayden helping to address health inequalities?
At Mayden, we’re interested to find out more about how services are using their data and joining it up with population health data to identify health inequalities in access to services and also in outcomes.
Data is at the heart of these improvements
Good quality data enables NHS services to understand the needs of the different population groups they serve and target initiatives to address health inequalities. The Core20Plus5 approach defines a target population cohort and clinical areas of focus requiring accelerated improvement.
Our Electronic Health Record (EHR), iaptus, supports healthcare providers in gathering and analysing their service data while offering insights into patient demographics such as location, age, gender, and ethnicity.
Through iaptus, services can pinpoint demographic groups that may be underrepresented relative to the local population, potentially facing obstacles in accessing services. Leveraging these insights, healthcare teams can effectively prioritise initiatives and enhance service delivery to address the disparities they’ve identified.
iaptus supports the Barnardo’s Cumbria Link Project to report on health inequalities for Children and Young People (CYP):
iaptus supports 20 Barnardo’s projects across the UK, including the Barnardo’s Cumbria Link social prescribing service. Social prescribing is “an approach that connects people to activities, groups and services in their community to meet the practical, social and emotional needs that affect their health and wellbeing” (NHS 2023). It can help reduce health inequalities by breaking down barriers to accessing community services and forming a support network around children, young people and families.
It’s now an established part of NHSE strategy that recognises that non-clinical social interventions can be appropriate in addressing people’s needs. Link workers spend time with children and young people to understand the health challenges they face and work across services to connect them to community activities, groups and support.
The Cumbria Link project supports 5-19 year olds including those who are on the SEND pathway, those identifying as LGBTQ+ and those generally with low level emotional wellbeing. Cumbria is a largely rural area with pockets of deprivation and Barnardo’s Link workers are able to target their support across socioeconomic groups and help to reduce barriers to participation in a range of services to improve wellbeing for children and young people.
- Read Barnardo’s ‘Missing link social prescribing for children and young people’ Report October 2023
iaptus helps the Cumbria Link team to provide reliable data on their services to stakeholders, manage patient journeys, and track outcomes for children and young people. They routinely record a range of data on referral source and reason, demographics, outcome impacts and feedback from parent, carers, children and referrers.
Join the conversation on how we might work together to improve health inequalities across the UK:
Mayden will be exhibiting at both Digital Health Rewired 2024 and the King’s Fund “Time for Action” Conference in partnership with Barnardo’s on the 12th March 2024. Please look out for us at the Mayden stand.
- Digital Health Rewired 2024
Approaches to models of care and transforming health inequalities
Gain insight into how North Cumbria ICS is streamlining diagnostic decision making to help reduce the backlog. Discover the framework that has been developed by NHS Wales to help people live healthier lives for longer through the discovery and testing of more effective approaches to prevention, earlier detection and treatment of diseases.
- King’s Fund CYP conference 2024
Time for action: addressing health inequalities for children and young people
Tackling health inequalities for children and young people has never been more important. This conference will take a solution-focused approach to explore how the health and care system can adapt to deliver meaningful change for children and young people.
